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How to set any song as a ringtone in your iPhone

It takes couple of minutes and it’s very easy. I’ll explain how to use iTunes 11 and 12 to quickly and easily turn any section of a tune into your ring tone, or any other alert tone. It doesn’t have to be a music track, either: you could record someone’s voice and make that your ringtone.

Launch iTunes by double-clicking its shortcut or by finding it in the Start menu. From your library, right-click on the song you want to use as a ringtone and then select Get Info. You can import any MP3 or AAC file into iTunes, and I find it effective to use the Voice Memos app on my iPhone to record real-world sounds or people’s voices to turn into ringtones.

Click OK. Right-click on the track again, and then select Create AAC version. iTunes will convert the song. It will appear as a duplicate track – you can identify it by the track length in seconds.

Right-click on the song that you chose originally and then using the Options tab from the Get info menu, untick the start and stop times to return them to their original times then click OK. Otherwise, when you play that track, it will only play the section between your start and stop times.

Now right-click on the short ringtone track and click Show in Windows Explorer

The file will be highlighted. Right-click on it and choose Rename. Now change the extension from .m4a to .m4r. Click Yes when asked if you want to change the extension.

Double-click the file to add it to the Tones section of your iTunes library (or add it using the ‘Add file to library’ menu option in iTunes).

In iTunes 12, here’s how to open the Tones section: Click on the three dots and choose Tones from the menu.

You can then drag and drop the m4r file into it from File Explorer:

For iTunes 11 and before: Connect your iPhone to your PC and click on ‘iPhone’ when it appears on the right-hand side of iTunes. Click on the Tones button in the menu running across the top and make sure Sync Tones is checked. If you choose ‘selected tones’ rather than ‘All tones’ make sure you tick the tones you want to appear on your iPhone. Click Apply at the bottom to start the sync.

When the sync is finished, tap Settings on your iPhone, then Sounds, then Ringtone. Your custom tones will appear at the top of the list, above the default Ringtones.